Does anyone have a recipe for strawberry & chocolate marble cake WITHOUT fresh strawberries? We will have a food sale in a few weeks and on Monday, we have a trial cooking session to see if the meal would be cohesive. I'm wondering if anyone have a recipe for a strawberry & chocolate marble cake with strawberry preserves. We are not allowed to use cake box mixes, btw. I would do a test recipe myself to see if I can substitute the fresh berries with preserves and do some adjustments with sugar content and whatnot, but I can't afford to do a trial and error recipe test this weekend because I'm saving my money for the ingredients for the food sale itself where we'll feed 80 students.

Thank you!

This is my favorite strawberry cake recipe.  It is a pretty pink color and very flavorful without being at all heavy or dense as can happen with fruit puree.  use your favorite white cake recipe for 2 8 or 9 inch layers.  Substitute 1/8 cup (2 Tbsp) of the sugar with dry strawberry jello.   Use 1 tsp strawberry extract and 2 tsp vanilla extract.  at the end, stir in one heaping cup of finely chopped freeze dried strawberries, including all the fine powdery bits and bake as usual.  Marble with your favorite dark chocolate cake recipe (dark for contrast).  I like Deluxe Devil's food cake on the Softasilk box. (I use Hershey's special dark cocoa.  Can't vouch for the frosting recipe).  Good luck

Picture shows strawberry and chocolate as separate layers

http://www.pillsburybaking.com/recipes/deluxe-devils-food-cake-3107

Jell-O was discontinued from the local grocery I'm buying from. No frozen berries, as well. How can I substitute it with preserves?

idk but i would try a strawberry swirl into the vanilla cake if i was using preserves -- i  think i'd want to punch up the flavor with some apricot preserves or lemon zest -- i'd also chop the preserves so there's no big chunky pieces -- 

so the chocolate is marbled into the strawberry cake? or vice versa?

i would not make a strawberry cake like yortma's where it's all incorporated with just preserves though -- using puree yes you could get there but preserves i would punch up the flavor and marble it into the batter 

Swirling the preserves into the vanilla batter sounds good to me. Do I need to adjust something in a regular chocolate & vanilla marble cake for this to work? It's more like marbling the chocolate to the strawberry/vanilla.

The jello is optional, but it does make the pretty pink color.  the strawberries are not frozen, but freeze dried.  (in a package with the dried fruits usually)  I don't know where you are, but Trader Joe's has them, as does several local stores.  Also can get them on line,  Sorry that it might not work out for you though.  It is really good.  

what i would do is put the vanilla batter in the pan and pipe the other two in there so you can swirl it in as you pipe --

and you can use this method to put the chocolate and strawberry BOTH in one bag so it will stripe the two and then you can just pipe your marbling since you are actually marbling two flavors -- one amount can be smaller -- no worries just put two in the bag --

like this:

you can go back over with a fork too but it's easy to loose marbling if you work it too much which i'm sure you know --

and i don't know what should be adjusted -- i've never baked with preserves in a cake -- i'd test it with a cupcake first -- you might need to add a slurry to hold it together -- might not -- please post about your results

a slurry of course is cornstarch + water added to the preserves and gently boil for a few to thicken -- would change the color but if it needs it so it doesn't dissolve in there when it bakes in the cake -- you can try that --

best to you -- please post your results

oh but use a very large tip because the preserves will clog the tip -- and i would chop or even strain the preserves before using -- i use parchment bags so i can always cut a large opening --

Will be trying your advice tonight! :)